


Taking Me Far Away

by Rubynye



Category: Starlight - Muse (Song)
Genre: F/F, Jukebox Fanworks Exchange, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24368062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: Zinny, staring straight ahead into nothing, gasps, “Now how do we get back?”
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Ship's Engineer/Chief Science Officer
Comments: 8
Kudos: 10
Collections: Jukebox 2020





	Taking Me Far Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kira_katrine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira_katrine/gifts).



> Written for Kira_katrine in the 2020 Jukebox Fic Exchange!

When the thrusters finally come back online and halt the ship’s spinning, Allie raises her head, spots the distant specks of light beyond the viewport, and realizes they aren’t stars anymore. They’re _galaxies_.

The shock hits her first, hard in her chest. Then the crazy swoop of triumph — they _did it!_ And then everything else comes rushing in, crewmates screaming and klaxons blaring and the air whirling around them, still swishing along even though the solid parts of the ship have been stilled. Allie’s hair whips across her eyes just as Tamara’s shriek rises above the din, a whoop of wild glee, “We fucking _made it!_ Fuck it all, LOOK!”

Tamara’s staggering, hair exploded around her head like a dandelion back home, as she gropes along the wall towards the viewpoint, punching the air as the fans push the breeze back. Allie pushes against the floor, shoves herself up on wobbly legs, the floor feeling like it’s rolling like a planetside sea, and reaches down to pull Ben beside her to his feet. “We made it!” she yells, and he pulls his hands off his ears and blinks wide eyes at her, and then grins so wide his teeth gleam, and then whoops aloud. Everyone’s whooping, cheering, hollering, and Allie lurches and skids the rest of the way to Tamara until she can reach out and clutch two fistfuls of her overalls, until Tamara can shriek earsplittingly and drag her in and kiss her down to the back of her throat, down to her soul.

Allie whoops into it, and kisses her back, and when Tamara lets her up the first thing she does is to salute her. “Congratulations, Chief Engineer.”

Eyes shining, Tamara salutes her back. “Thank you, Chief Scien—“

Across the bridge, Zinny shrieks over the whining alarm of a radiation spike, her fingers flying over her console. The distant specks fly by as the ship rotates, as everyone looks to Zinny and the view screen, as the wormhole’s flaring glow floods the bridge with blue light. As the wormhole promptly crumples in on itself and vanishes, and the bridge is silent except for seventeen people gasping and the Red Alert alarm blaring onwards. Until Zinny, staring straight ahead into nothing, gasps, “Now how do we get back?”

* * *

Fifteen standard hours later and Allie, Captain Lan, Tamara, and the rest of the command staff lie more or less slumped in their places at the conference table. Everyone else is going over ship’s repairs or dismissed to quarters. There are twenty-six people aboard, and Allie knows not one of them is asleep.

Halfway down the table, between Captain Lan and Doctor Diego, the jug of 40% ethanol lies on its side, empty except for vapors. Tamara had suggested it three hours ago as an aid to creative thinking. Two hours ago Lan overruled her previous decision and went herself to get it. Now it’s empty, and they have a solution. It’s just an impossible one.

Allie presses her face into her arm and groans. Diego, head buried under his arms, groans in answer. Various unhappy noises echo around the room, until Tamara, hiding behind her hair, mutters, “How far is it again?”

Zam takes a breath to answer and Allie truculently talks over him. “Too fucking far.” They are literally millions of lightyears from home. Allie stubbornly refuses to think of the precise number, as if she can refute it that way.

Zam makes a grumbly noise and pipes down again. Allie drapes her other arm over her head. They can reopen the wormhole, using a quantum vortex in a magnetically bounded Bose-Einstein Condensate. If they can calculate the exact spot where the wormhole closed, down to the femtometer. Which is impossible with the current ship’s computer. Or, rather, it’s technically possible but it would take three years to do the calculations, more or less. They have air and supplies for 30 days.

Once again, Allie considers jacking herself into the computer and lending it her neurons. They’d probably get the calculations done in a few days that way… and permanently sever her brain from her body while she was at it. Just the thought makes her feel like the floor’s about to give way, and besides, Tamara would kill her. Once again, she wishes they could call home for just one new set of eyes on the problem, but it turns out distances on the scale of galactic clusters are beyond even ansible range. 

Once again Allie wonders what use she is as Chief Science Officer if she can’t fix this, and presses her cheek against the table, and moans as the room continues its wobbly spins.

“All right,” Captain Lan says, something like firmly. “Clearly this meeting has gone past its useful duration. You’re all dismissed. We’ll reconvene at 1000.”

Allie picks up her head as chairs scrape and people mumble assent, and finds Tamara already beside her, tall and smiling and only a little wobbly as she holds her hand out. Allie takes Tamara’s long strong hand and pulls herself up, and they wrap their arms around each other’s waists and lean on each other as they make their way from the conference room, and if Tamara’s squeezing particularly tightly Allie just breathes in her hold and enjoys it.

* * *

Allie plummets into waking, slamming into consciousness. Even with the water and salicylic she and Tamara shared before sleeping, her head throbs. The room is dark around her, Tamara’s side of the bed is empty and cold. 

Allie sits straight up, clutching at her pounding temples. Her implants always ache when she lets herself drink too much. The chrono says, _723_. She was expecting to have to wake Tamara up, after all the inspiration they all drank. Where is Tamara? There’s no light or noise in the ‘fresher, no alarms, no message on the chrono.

No, that last’s not true. The chrono is actually displaying _724*_. Allie thumbs the asterisk to get the hidden message to reveal itself. 

Instead it says, _Message to be revealed at 2359_. Allie jabs the chrono again and it simply repeats the message schedule. 

She takes a breath, looks at the vidport’s display of the distant stardust view outside, the Milky Way just another dot of light on the edge of the vast emptiness they’ve found, and swings her legs out of bed.

The commissary first, Allie tells the wave of worry sloshing through her. Maybe Tamara just wanted something hot to drink. But there’s no one there. Allie makes herself drink two cups of tea instead of the coffee she knows would scour her stomach, then trots down and in a level to Upper Engineering.

Sinha is the only one there, head bent over a screenreader, and she startles all over when she sees Allie, who waves off her alarmed salute. “Nothing’s happening,” she reassures Sinha. “I was just wondering … well, nevermind, really.”

Sinha nods, young eyes wide, and Allie leaves her to her overnight shift. 

For a moment she considers going by Forward Observations and then just to the Bridge to start her shift before the 1000 meeting, but instead she heads to the Central Computer. It’s not as if it’s much moer than begun the calculations they need from it, but Allie still goes.

She finds Tamara there, in one of the jack-in stations, sitting calmly on a cushion with her hair tied up in a fluffy puffball atop her head, so she could attach all the connections. They’re not just attached, they’re welded into her implants. Her head’s tipped back, her eyes shut and a soft smile on her soft lips, a small welder on the floor beside her open hand.

The clear shield is welded shut too, with the station’s seat wedged against it for good measure.

The shield’s shaking. It’s shaking because Allie is banging on it. She’s banging on it because she can’t open it and disconnect Tamara and drag her out. She takes a deep breath, forces her fingers to uncurl, presses them to the shield and takes another heavy breath, five in, seven out, as she watches Tamara’s quiet smiling face.

The console shows Captain Lam has been taken off duty by Diego until 0930. Tamara’s protege Najima is also offline until 0900. Allie stops herself from searching out any more help, swallows hard, and takes the second jack-in station. Maybe she can still talk Tamara out of this, she thinks as she closes her eyes and falls —

_a sea of numbers. Iceberg integers, small sharp digits, sandy streams of tiny decimals. Allie falls into a glowing sea of numbers and lands without a splash. In the far distance she can see another figure bobbing, and she fights her way up the scouring current towards it. She already knows who she’ll find._

_Tamara is floating, arms outstretched, numbers streaming through her fingers, hair spread out in an electric nimbus around her head. Allie reaches for her and can’t reach her, a crackling buzz between them, but Tamara notices her and opens her eyes. Her pupils are glowing. ‘Hi, sweetie’._

_‘HI?!’ Allie shouts. Little streaks of light are slicing across whatever she’s visualizing as skin. ‘You’re trying to kill yourself and all you can say is hi?’_

_Tamara smiles, her forehead crinkling above her sad eyebrows. ‘Yeah,’ she admits. ‘But it’s not like I can say sorry. I’m not gonna bullshit you.’_

_‘Trying to commit_ suicide _is bullshit enough!’ Allie is bursting with exclamation points. ’Tamara, get out of here!’_

_‘Hey, I might not die.’ Tamara grins now. Allie feels the pressure of a scream inside her phantom chest. ‘Someone needs to augment the computer, and Najima knows everything I do and more. I can feel the calculations, you know. It’s like being electrocuted in a good way.’_

_‘There’s no such thing!’ Allie reaches for Tamara again, until it strains, until it burns. ‘What happened to ‘We go together, we return together?’_

_Tamara’s floating hair waves and crackles. ‘If —_ when _I get through this Lan can put me in the brig.’ Her grin shines blindingly. She’s shining all over, lit up with electricity down all her nerves. ’We need to let Home know it worked, for however much this counts as working. Just plugging people in for an hour or two won’t cut it. The system needs the sustained boost. So I’m boosting it.’_

_‘But — but —‘ Allie blubbers, reaching, reaching, and Tamara’s glow tingles the ends of her fingertips, so near, so far away. ‘Then I’m staying in with you.’_

_‘I knew you’d say that.’ Hands close around Allie’s, Tamara’s, long and strong and thrumming like live wires. ‘And you know you can’t. You’re the one who can open the wormhole again. You’re the one who can get us back.’_

_‘But —‘ and Tamara is kissing her, searingly hot, her vision blanked with brightness, and Allie is falling again, falling —‘_

This time Allie hits the smooth floor, the headset wire tangled around her arm when she tries to pull her hands to her face, because she’s already crying.

* * *

Captain Lan comes up out of the connection shaking and grim-faced, and grabs Allie in a tight hug before striding off to make an all-crew announcement of a rotating schedule to boost the computer, no more than 60 minutes per person per 36 hours. Dr. Diego curses over Tamara in at least four languages. It takes Najima most of the day to pry Tamara’s shield free, and even when they get it raised they can’t dare try to unweld the jacks from her implants.

As if punishing herself, Najima takes the next shift, and Allie sits on the floor beside Tamara holding her limp hand and Najima’s twitching one for the whole hour. When Najima shudders back to awareness Allie lets go and makes herself get to work.

Diego doesn’t want to let her take a shift with the computer, but she sees her haggard face reflected in his eyes before he shuts them and goes back to rigging up an IV rack for Tamara. Allie closes her eyes and falls into the flowing ocean of computations, and doesn’t look for Tamara, doesn’t look for anything.

Tamara finds her. Tamara glows even more brightly, little sparks and fragments fizzling off her into the current. Allie can barely make out her familiar smile. 

_’I don’t know if I want to talk to you,’ Allie says, self-protectively resentful even though she knows, she_ knows how little time is left.

Tamara wraps around her, those familiar long arms, that familiar strength, even if it’s all a trick of the interface. ’Then don’t talk,’ Allie hears, breathed into her ear. ‘We have work to do anyway.’

Allie tips her head back into Tamara’s cloud of hair, light flooding out her vision, and lets the tide of calculations sweep away her consciousness.

* * *

Everyone wraps their attention around Allie like a cocoon. Her mug is never empty. She keeps finding food bars and snacks at her elbow every time she looks up. When she bends her head over her work she can feel worried, caring eyes on her. All the eyes of the ship but the pair she wants.

Before her second shift with the computer she takes a hot water shower, combs and pins her hair, walks around their quarters and finds Tamara already packed most of her belongings in her ship’s chest. Allie wonders how long Tamara was turning the realization over in her head before she decided to lock herself into the computer, and stares at the message note on the chrono, and wraps her arms around herself.

In the Central Computer Allie finds Tamara lying on her side on a cot. Diego and his staff must have moved her once it became clear she couldn’t be disconnected. Allie runs her fingers through Tamara’s puff of hair and over the cool curve and hollow of her cheek, her strange little smile, then lets go and plugs in.

_’Were’s so fucking close,’ Allie hears, a memory colliding with the present. Tamara floats in front of her, a vague outline of radiance. Allie reaches forward and it’s like shoving her hands into boiling yet icy water, but she grits her mental teeth and does it._

_Luminous suggestions of eyes catch her gaze. ‘How close are we?’_

_‘Microns’, Allie hears all around her, Tamara’s voice interwoven with metal._

_‘When we find it, you’ll let go?’ Allie asks, pushing up hope, staring into that blaze of light._

_Tamara — flickers, like a flame. ‘I don’t remember how.’_

_‘Do you remember your name?’ As hope burns to ash, leaving only fear._

_‘I remember you,’ Tamara says from everywhere and nowhere. ‘I remember when we started working together on this. I remember we gotta get this news home.’_

_Fingers or flames wrap around Allie’s hands. ‘Then let’s finish this,’ she says, and flings herself into the light._

Allie comes to on the floor again, on her side, Dr. Diego kneeling beside her. Her brain feels fizzy and sparking, crisp around the edges, but in the soft undamaged center... “Allie,” he says again. 

“I have the coordinates,” she tells him, pushing up on her elbow. 

Gently, he pushes back on her shoulder, trying to keep her where she is. All he seems to notice is that she’s speaking. “Can you tell me where you are?”

“About halfway between NGC7582 and the Fornax Cluster,” she says, pushing up against his hands. When she sits up her head spins, her implants tingling all along their edges. “I have the coordinates! I can get us home!”

Despite himself, Diego blinks, and lets her up. Allie presses her feet to the floor, wills her knees to stop shaking, and turns to call up Zinny and Captain Lan.

* * *

Three days, five hours, and nineteen minutes after they arrived, Allie sits on the Bridge making the most minute adjustments to her setup. Zinny, holding her breath, is shifting the ship’s position a millimeter to port. Everyone is on the Bridge, quiet but for their controlled breathing, except for Dr. Diego and Tamara down in Sickbay.

Tamara might wake up any moment. She might never wake up. Her message had been an apology, an 'I love you', and, "Remember the Cassini Poem, ok? 'I came all this way for you'. We came all this way together." Allie's listened to it six times so far. And she can’t think of that now. This is their third try. ‘Fire,’ Allie exhales, and Zinny triggers the laser one more time.

Nothing. Then a speck of light, blooming into an unfurling glow that keeps expanding, infinitely deep. The wormhole, re-established at last. 

Allie inhales. Distantly, everyone is cheering.

A solid hand on her shoulder. “Well done,” Captain Lan says, patting her once more before turning to Zinny, who looks up, eyes shining bright. “Take us in,” she orders, and as Allie takes a breath and lets herself think of Tamara’s smile, Zinny reaches for the controls and the ship sails straight in.


End file.
